


Torn

by TheSigyn



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-06
Updated: 2015-06-06
Packaged: 2018-04-03 05:36:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,073
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4088911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSigyn/pseuds/TheSigyn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The funeral had been in the afternoon, he’d expected everyone would have gone home but there was someone in the cemetery tonight. It was Buffy. Buffy and Angel, the grand torturer himself, flaunting their great and tragic love beneath the midnight sky. Spike comes across the two of them the night of Joyce's funeral. He's unsure how he feels about it... and can't decide what he means to do. Set during Forever, season 5.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Torn

  
    The night was cool and quiet. Spike thought it fitting, for the night of a good lady’s funeral. Joyce Summers. Nice lady. From the first day of their acquaintance, she had treated him like a human being. She’d laughed with him and commiserated with him. She’d make him a nice cuppa tea when he came ‘round. Apart from that first day at the Highschool, when he didn’t know her from Adam, he had never once had an impulse to threaten or harm her. For a vampire, this was rare.

    He hadn’t thought anyone would be there. The funeral had been in the afternoon, the sun blazing overhead, and he’d expected everyone would have gone home before the vamps started crawling. But there was someone in the cemetery tonight. He could hear them murmuring, though he couldn’t make out their words. The wind was wrong, so he couldn’t quite gauge their scent. He took a slight detour, and then spotted them beneath a tree.

    A man and a woman, curled up against each other, the man’s arm around her shoulder, his hand caressing her hair. The wind shifted, and Spike was struck with their scent.

    It was Buffy. Buffy and Angel, the grand torturer himself, flaunting their great and tragic love beneath the midnight sky. Rage flared through him. Spike’s loneliness and barren existence seemed highlighted in that moment. How dare she! How dare she fall into the arms of that creature, and claim that he, Spike, was a monster. Angel had been a nastier monster than Spike ever was. Spike took lives, while Angel had destroyed them, piece by piece. He’d destroyed Drusilla. He’d tried as hard as he could to destroy Spike. And now here he was, with his arms around the most seductive woman the world had ever spawned, snuggling like he was a complete innocent, and he’d never committed a sin. Unjust, that’s what it was.

     _I could rip his bloody head off,_ Spike thought. _I could pin him to the ground and give it a good twist, then just keep turning until his head popped off in my hands like a bottle top. The dust would trickle through my fingers, and I could throw it in the air like confetti. And her too. Pin her down with a gravestone, then throw another and another on top of it. I could probably get around the chip that way. Listen to her ribs crack one by one, wait until she’s dead and lap up all the blood. Roll in it, wash my face in her juices until I’m drowned in her scent, and this madness can finally end. Bugger that, I could do better. I could chain them both together below my crypt and watch them slowly starve. Maybe I’d keep her just alive, and wait until Angel was so starved for blood he went mad, until he couldn’t keep from biting her. Watch him tear her throat out, suck her dry, and then slice down his stomach until the blood pours down, catch it and drink it like fine burgundy. Follow it up with his cold ashes._

    The violence eased his heart for a moment, the demon basking in the ferocity. Then the fullness of their scent told him something more. Buffy.... Buffy was crying.

    Spike felt like he’d been slapped. His visions went from violent to sensual in an eye blink, as he realized Buffy was miserable, grieving for her mum, young and alone beneath a cruel and unpitying sky.

     _I could hold her,_ he thought. _I could wrap my arms around her and pull her to me. She’d never have anything so tender. Caress that lovely hair, rub the tension from her shoulders. Draw her tiny weight into my lap, feel those thin fingers as she clutched to me, her breath against my throat, her hands on the back of my neck, seeking for solace. Oh, to kiss those tears away. Taste the salt, and the sadness, tenderly brush the sorrow away with my lips, my tongue. Draw her heat against my collar, feel her sobbing breaths. To kiss her now... her mouth heavy with tears, her breath thick with sorrow, to use my power to hold her steady, be her strength. I would tell her it was all right to grieve, that death is inevitable, that Joyce is more at peace than I’ll ever be. To hear her voice, listen to her tell me all that fear and sadness, and take it away; ease what I can, promise to carry with her what I cannot free her of. Offer my help with everything, her sis and her house and her troubles. Hold her tightly enough that she doesn’t feel she’s about to blow away with the grief. I could do that. I could...._

    He longed to do that. His arms ached with the need feel her body, and his hands clenched until his fingernails formed little half-moons in his flesh. As much as he longed for it, for her, longed to be her solace, he knew it was fruitless. She despised him. She would never accept him, or his love, or his comfort; her friends wouldn’t even accept he held respect for her dead mother. He wasn’t a man, he could never be abided, the whole thing was a sick, twisted disease in his heart which he would give anything to be rid of.

    And Angel’s hand on the back of her head, cradling her to him....

    Spike turned and walked away.

     _Thank god he’s there,_ he thought, unbidden, confused, as far from his demon as it was possible to be. _Thank god she has him tonight. Someone’s strength to hide behind, someone’s arms to hold her, someone’s shoulder to cry into. Thank god she’s not all alone in this. That her grief has somewhere to go, someone else’s arms to carry it for her, if only for one night. I know he can be her strength. If nothing else, I know he can do that._

   _God, how dare that monster! I could slaughter them both, and laugh at the symphony of their screams!_

_I wish I could help. I could hold her so tenderly, protect her, never let her go...._

_God, I’m glad he’s there._

    A string of curses echoed through his head. He felt sick. He couldn’t think anymore. The maelstrom of conflicting emotion was making him dizzy.

    He went to get extremely drunk instead.

  
  



End file.
